Connection.

Connection.

Acantha Ida Baily cathunked down the cement stairs from the back entrance. The scraping sound her feet made on the aged concrete did not faze her at all. She was no longer aware of the sounds her body made as she made her way to her cubicle. Her routine was solidly without deviance, and she always arrived at the entrance exactly at 7:22 a.m. to the chagrin of her fellow employees who came in the back door in varying shades of frenzy every morning. Melanie was the office manager and while dependable in almost every way, she was typically pushing through the front door some time between 7:32 and 7:36 a.m. Amelia, the team Vanilla, was either thirty-six minutes early and already knee-deep in her work or she was eighteen minutes late with wet hair following her early morning paddle boarding at the local reservoir. Claire always bursts through the doors with a loud energy booming hello at each employee she passes at their cubicles and chats with each of them for several minutes about their evenings or weekends until she settles into her uncomfortable chair at 7:57 a.m.

Today was the same as the others and Ida sat down at her computer and began filing through her latest e-mails. There were two at the top that demanded her immediate attention, twelve which could be deleted right away and six that could wait until after lunch and maybe even wait until the end of the week depending on how the day went. She loved a well-written e-mail. To be honest, she loved a well-written anything. Everyone in the office gave the projects to Ida which needed to be written or presented to management because she is the best there is at putting things together.

Ida had a big day ahead of her. They were hiring two positions in the office, and she was whittling down the candidates who had applied for the position last week. She had a point system based on the applicants experience in and outside the field, their length of time at each previous job, point-weighted skills and a variant of points based on particular words used in their reference letters. She had six interviews before her lunch hour and the training of two new employees on the second floor until the end of the day.

Amelia swished by in a summer dress with her ceramic bowl of oatmeal in one hand with a mug of steaming tea in the other. She was telling Melanie about the concert in the park she had been to the night before and Melanie was oohing and ahhing at just the right places and asking all the right questions. Ida was not really programmed to be very sociable. She tried to polite and engage with the other women in the office, but she never knew exactly what to ask or how to respond when they were discussing the color of their gel nails and the placement of their eyelash extensions. She often just listened and kept working. Claire was usually kind to stop at her cubicle and try to make conversation. It was easy with Claire because she did most of the talking and was often distracted by text messages coming into her watch and then she would wander off to take a personal call on her cell phone.

Ida had an I-pad and a list of questions for the first candidate, and she met her at the front door of the office. She made notes about her promptness, how many times she stumbled over the answer to a question and how much she knew about the company. Ida was the perfect choice for the first interview in the process because she did not seem to get sidetracked by the candidate’s quirky stories but stuck to the questions she had prepared. Her third interview was an intriguing one. The candidate’s name was Roberta Pentium. Ida had liked her on paper too. She had all the right qualifications and had a concise and well-written resume. She did not spend any time on stories but succinctly answered each question, thanked Ida for her time, shook her hand and left the office. The last interview arrived late with a story about her daughter and a problem at school. Her name was JodiLynn. She had long dark hair which she flipped every few minutes. She was distractable and shared a great deal of information with Ida. JodiLynn was divorced with four daughters. She showed Ida pictures on her phone of each of the girls. She also told her about the date she had the night before with an old boyfriend from high school who she had run into at Costco. By the time she finished all six interviews, Ida put Roberta’s resume at the top of the pile.

Ida spent the last two hours of her afternoon training the two newest employees from the second floor: Frankie and Anna. She remembered recommending both for the job after their interviews. She would love to work on the second floor with them. They had both downloaded the newest training and were fluent in the changing systems from corporate. Ida signed off on their training and was back to her cubicle with an hour to spend on a production report. The two trainees who had just left her were top of the list in production. She knew they were going to be powerful assets to the company.

Claire was standing next to Melanie at her cubicle, and they were talking quietly. Melanie was having trouble with her husband. Amelia had also just walked up at the same time Ida had. She quickly joined the others. Ida stood and watched the huddle momentarily but did not join the conversation.

Ida submitted her time for the day and left promptly as she did every day at 4:01p. She went back up the flight of stairs and took a right turn before getting to the back entrance. She entered the storage closet. She set her internal rebooting system to wake her at 7:19 the next morning. She lifted her pant leg and opened the flap to connect the charging chord to her battery system. She ran a diagnostic and prepared to enter Sleep Mode. The door opened and Frankie and Anna also came in and completed the same process. That left one more charging station in the closet. Maybe Roberta would be joining them next week.